Mobile app users are demanding high performance at all times and they rarely give a second chance to an app that performs poorly. For this reason, you have to make sure to prepare your app in advance by executing a proper load testing process. JMeter can be used for mobile performance testing. To start with, we will show you the steps you can take to record the scenario in a mobile app with JMeter. It’s similar to recording scripts for web applications. All we have to do is set the correct proxy in place for the mobile device. However, you need to first prepare JMeter to record your scripts and then we’ll be able to do JMeter Mobile Performance Testing.

Prerequisites:

Both Mobile device and JMeter installed on a computer should be on the same network. This enables your computer to be a proxy for your mobile device.

Configure JMeter:

Open JMeter and create a recording template. Click on File → Template and select Recording template.

This will create a template with the required elements like Thread Group, Recording Controller, and HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder.

JMeter setup

This is the configuration we need to make in JMeter in order to record the scripts. Now, we need to set up the JMeter proxy in mobile devices so that all mobile requests will be recorded in JMeter. Follow the steps below to set up the proxy in Android and iOS platforms.

Configure iOS Mobile Devices:

To set up a mobile proxy on iOS devices, follow these steps:

  1. Open Settings → Wi-Fi → Your connected network
  2. Choose Manual from HTTP Proxy section
  3. Set Server = Computer’s IP address
  4. Set Port field = JMeter’s port value

IOS Proxy Settings

Configure Android Mobile Devices:

To set up a mobile proxy, on Android devices, follow these steps:

  1. Settings → Wi-Fi → Your connected network
  2. Press and hold on connected network and Click “Modify Network” option.
  3. Choose Show advanced options
  4. Choose Manual from HTTP Proxy section
  5. Set Proxy hostname field = your computer’s IP address
  6. Set Proxy Port field = JMeter’s port value

Android Proxy Settings

Save the configuration. Now your device will use your computer as a proxy with the defined port and IP address.

Start Recording:

Open HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder in JMeter and click the Start button to start the proxy. JMeter is running as a proxy and able to capture any request coming from the device that’s connected to its IP.

When you click on the Start button, you’ll receive a message “Root CA certificate ApacheJMeterTemporaryRootCA created bin directory”. Just click the OK button. If you don’t add this certificate to your device, you will not be able to capture HTTPS traffic. You’ll only capture HTTP requests.

Root CA warning

Install the Certificate:

Copy the Certificate file “ApacheJMeterTemporaryRootCA.crt” located in the bin folder of JMeter to your mobile device and install it.

Record your scenario and perform correlations. Upload your JMX file to RedLine13 to run the tests for JMeter Mobile Performance Testing. To run a JMeter tests on RedLine13, follow this link Running a JMeter Load Test.